Wilders and Sharia Versus Freedom of Speech on Capitol Hill

Posted on28th April 2015|Comments Off on Wilders and Sharia Versus Freedom of Speech on Capitol Hill

“Crude, risible pretenses about their ostensible support for the “bedrock principle” of free speech—a uniquely Western ideal—notwithstanding, the effort by Congressmen Ellison and Carson is designed to enforce antithetical Sharia-based restrictions on rational criticism of Islamic dogma, and the obvious effects of that dogmatism.”

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Representatives Keith Ellison and Andre Carson doth takiya too much. In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, the good Congressmen seek to ban Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders entry to the U.S. Mr. Wilders is slated to appear for a series of American events, beginning Wednesday, April 29, 2015, on Capitol Hill.

But what motivates these Muslim Congressmen to go to such a length? I maintain the answer can be found in two recent investigative reports which elucidated the Muslim Brotherhood connections of Reps. Ellison and Carson.

extensive contacts with both the Muslim American Society and the Council on American-Islamic Relations – both identified by the U.S. government as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood.

An extensive dossier compiled about Rep. Carson’s involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood, concluded:

Rep. André Carson’s numerous and longstanding ties to Muslim Brotherhood organizations, including organizations known to support or fund terrorism, extend well-beyond a single event or two, which might be explained by a lack of knowledge or a failure to conduct due diligence. Rep. Carson has received funds from, attended fundraising events for, and publicly promoted the agenda of these groups on a deliberate, continuous, and unapologetic basis for many years.

The Ellison/Carson fulmination to Secretaries Kerry and Johnson—a farrago of mischaracterizations, and calumnies—is especially, if predictably, odious, given their own continued ties to various Sharia supremacist Muslim Brotherhood front groups. Moreover, the willful distortions in the Ellison/Carson fulmination are easily exposed, and debunked, as demonstrated below.

Ellison/Carson fulmination #1: Wilders alleged “participation in inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence.”Zero evidence is presented in support of this calumny which further ignores all the hard, countervailing data Wilders has cited, such as those indicating that 73% of Turkish and Moroccan Muslims in the Netherlands view jihadists in Syria as “heroes.” Consistent with Wilder’s rational concerns, 82% of the Dutch believe that jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq increase the risk of an attack in the Netherlands, 76% favor stripping such jihadists of their Dutch nationality, 67% want to introduce border controls to prevent these jihadists from returning, and 75% want additional manpower for the AIVD (the Dutch national security and intelligence service). In addition a majority of the Dutch population, 55% , favors stopping immigration from Islamic countries, 63% want no new mosques constructed, 72% favor a constitutional ban on Sharia (Islamic) law in the Netherlands, 64% believe that the arrival of immigrants from Islamic countries has not been beneficial to the Netherlands, and 73% saw a relationship between Islam and the acts of jihad terror in Boston, London and Paris (during 2013).

Ellison/Carson fulmination #2: “Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist responsible for the murder of 77 people in Oslo was inspired by Mr. Wilders hateful message.”But this claim is opposite to reality. Breivik has publicly acknowledged (in a letter) that he deliberately mischaracterized himself as a counter-jihadist, and a Zionist, in order to fool the media into attacking such people (i.e., those with Wilders’ actual affinities!), and conceal his true fidelity to “nordicists” and “ethnocentric nationalists” i.e.. neo-Nazis.

Ellison/Carson fulmination #3: “He justifies his desire to ban the Quran and Islam from the Netherlands with depraved comments like ‘Islam is not a religion it is an ideology, the ideology of a retarded culture.’” While calling the Koran hate speech with specific reference to the Dutch Penal Code, Wilders was simply asking for consistent application of Dutch law. And, like Winston Churchill (who wrote that Mein Kampf was “…the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message”), Wilders compared the Koran to Mein Kamp, and called it hate speech according to the Dutch Penal Code. However, Wilders has not insisted on “banning” Islam from the Netherlands. That is false. He agrees with the 55% of Dutch who want a moratorium on further Muslim immigration, the 63% that wish for no new mosques to be constructed, and the 72% favoring a constitutional ban on the application of the Sharia in the Netherlands. Global trends demonstrating that Islam is a religio-political ideology, not merely a religion, underlie the 72% support for banning the Sharia in the Netherlands. Pew data reveal 77% of Muslims from the world’s five largest Sunni Muslim populations (i.e., from Indonesia, Bengladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and the Muslim majority of Nigeria) desire that the Sharia be the “Law of the land,” despite its liberty-abrogating denial of freedom of conscience and speech, sanctioning lethal, and/or barbaric and dehumanizing punishments for the “crimes” of apostasy, adultery, alcohol consumption, and theft, and imposition of legal inequalities upon all non-Muslims, and even Muslim women.

Ellison/Carson fulmination #4: “In 2010 and 2011 Wilders was formally charged with inciting hatred and discrimination by the Dutch government.”None of the details surrounding Wilders contrived “prosecution,” or even the fact of his ultimate acquittal were provided! During a dinner in May 2010, Tom Schalken, one of the judges who gave the order to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OM) to prosecute Wilders, attempted to persuade Islamologist Professor Hans Jansen, an expert witness for Wilders’ defense, that the Dutch MP was guilty. Jansen insisted, “…over and over [Schalken] steered the conversation towards the Wilders trial… to convince me of the correctness of his [Schalken’s] decision to drag Wilders to court.” Accordingly, a special chamber of the Amsterdam district court ruled that the ongoing case against Wilders had to be be restartedwith a different panel of judges. But even after these events, another “objective” jurist—the President of the Netherlands Supreme Court himself—made plain his own hideous bias proclaiming that Wilders defense of freedom of speech, let alone fair legal proceedings, somehow undermined Dutch “jurisprudence.” Despite the Kafkaesque twists and turns of the proceedings, Wilders was ultimately acquitted, as he pointed out in a June 24, 2011 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “after a legal ordeal that lasted almost two years.” Bat Ye’or, appropriately emphasizing Wilder’s personal heroism, characterized his acquittal as a “Copernican revolution,” achieved by a solitary “unarmed man, constantly threatened by death and whose only defense was his courageous and unbending commitment to say the truth.” Wilders subsequently provided this more guarded, sobering overall assessment: “The court acquitted me because I had criticized Islam, not Muslims, and because, as an elected politician participating in a public debate, I was entitled to greater freedom of speech than everyday citizens.”

Muslim Congressmen Ellison and Carson embody worrying trends within the general U.S. Muslim population vis-à-vis Constitutionally-protected free speech. Polling data collected by Wenzel Strategies during October 22 to 26, 2012, from 600 U.S. Muslims (i.e., a sample characterized by high socio-economic status), indicated widespread support among American votaries of Islam for Sharia-based rejection of freedom expression, as guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. When asked, “Do you believe that criticism of Islam or Muhammad should be permitted under the Constitution’s First Amendment?,” 58% replied “no,” while only 42% affirmed this most basic manifestation of freedom of speech, i.e., to criticize religious, or any other dogma. Indeed, oblivious to US constitutional law, as opposed to Islam’s Sharia, a largely concordant 45% of respondents agreed “…that those who criticize or parody Islam in the U.S. should face criminal charges,” while 38% did not, and 17% were “unsure.” Fully 12% of this Muslim sample even admitted they believed in application of the draconian, Sharia-based punishment for the non-existent crime of “blasphemy” in the US code, answering affirmatively, “…that Americans who criticize or parody Islam should be put to death.” Also, consistent with such findings 43% of these U.S. Muslims rejected the right of members of other faiths to proselytize to adherents of Islam, disagreeing, “…that U.S. citizens have a right to evangelize Muslims to consider other faiths.” Additional confirmatory data revealed that nearly two-fifths (39%) agreed “…that Shariah law should be considered when adjudicating cases that involve Muslims,” while nearly one-third (32%) of this American Muslim sample believed “…Shariah law should be the supreme law of the land in the US.”

Crude, risible pretenses about their ostensible support for the “bedrock principle” of free speech—a uniquely Western ideal—notwithstanding, the effort by Congressmen Ellison and Carson is designed to enforce antithetical Sharia-based restrictions on rational criticism of Islamic dogma, and the obvious effects of that dogmatism.